Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy share a theoretical foundation while differing in their format. Classical psychoanalysis involves multiple sessions per week and the use of the couch, with the patient oriented away from the analyst. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is what Dr. Steinbok practices in Boca Raton, is conducted face-to-face and typically involves one or two sessions per week while drawing on the same theoretical understanding of unconscious process, defense, transference, and the significance of early relational experience. The clinical goals are comparable: understanding and modifying the psychological structures that generate a patient's difficulties rather than simply managing their effects.
In practice, psychoanalytic sessions in Boca Raton with Dr. Steinbok involve the patient speaking relatively freely about what is on their mind, what is troubling them, what they find themselves thinking or avoiding, and what is happening in their relationships and daily life. Dr. Steinbok listens for patterns, for what is not being said alongside what is, and for the way the patient relates to the therapeutic situation itself. Over time, those observations become part of a collaborative exploration of the patient's psychological life that goes deeper than a presenting complaint and broader than the specific symptoms that brought them in. This is the kind of treatment that produces durable change because it reaches the structures that generate symptoms rather than addressing the symptoms directly.
